Senators criticize corps handling of watershed

GAINESVILLE - Georgia's two U.S. Senators on Tuesday chastised the Army Corps of Engineers for accidentally releasing billions of gallons of water from Lake Lanier as the state slid into a drought.

"If this kind of mistake had been made on the battlefield, it would have cost American lives," Sen. Saxby Chambliss said at a field hearing in north Georgia on the state's ongoing water dispute with Alabama and Florida.

Brigadier General Michael Walsh, Commander of the South Atlantic Division of the Corps, assured the lawmakers that steps have been taken to prevent a repeat of the error, caused by a faulty gauge.

"We were releasing more water than was entering the lake by approximately half an inch a day," Walsh said. He said the lake now is seven feet below normal levels., and North Georgia now is in a moderate drought. The drought becomes severe further south, Walsh said.

At the Tuesday hearing of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Chambliss and Sen. Johnny Isakson vowed to keep the pressure on the Corps to draw up a new water-control plan that would tackle the larger issue of balancing the needs of the booming Atlanta area with those of endangered species downstream. Walsh said federal officials are set to begin drawing up that plan in January and that it is expected to take two years.

Critics say the Corps is operating under a plan that is outdated and sends too much water downstream to support endangered mussels and sturgeon in Florida at the expense of the Atlanta area's drinking water supply.

Georgia has been involved since the 1990s in a dispute with neighboring Alabama and Florida over how to manage the Alabama-Coosa-Tallapoosa and the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint river basins.

The problem came to a head in June when the corps reported that faulty gauge had allowed some 22 billion gallons of water to accidentally flow from Lake Lanier, even as the state sank into a drought.